MILDURA state MP Jade Benham went on Facebook last Saturday to claim the Mildura Base Public Hospital “is still protected by local media”.
It was a baseless statement by Ms Benham with no evidence to back it up, something some elected politicians make a habit of.
The communities they represent deserve better.
The Facebook comment came in response to the Sunraysia Daily front-page story last weekend where Ms Benham attacked the management of MBPH, suggesting it had lost the public’s confidence.
The Nationals Member for Mildura used State Parliament to launch her attack, then followed it up with a column in the Sunraysia Daily and a separate media release.
In it, she cited a number of figures and told Sunraysia Daily the hospital’s annual report was the source of the statistics.
The Sunraysia Daily, as any reputable media organisation should do, fact-checked those figures and found some discrepancies.
For instance, Ms Benham claimed births were down 14 per cent, when the annual reports from the 2021-22 and 2022-23 financial years showed births were down only seven per cent.
Personally, I’m not sure what the big deal was anyway. I’m no doctor, but I imagine birth rates do vary from year to year, it’s more the birds and bees and all that stuff than anything sinister to be read into.
What was not mentioned in the article was that, according to the hospital, over the past 12 months births at the Mildura hospital are actually up 16 on the previous year, so it seems a more productive 12 months all round.
Ms Benham also cited a series of quotes, purported to be from unnamed sources and labelled as “consistent messaging” to support her claims of public dissatisfaction.
Among these quotes from person unknown was: “All the doctors now seem to be locums.”
This quote was fundamentally wrong.
The truth, according to a hospital spokesperson, is the majority of doctors at MBPH are staff doctors. Dr Brian McCully, the head of obstetrics, isn’t a fly-in doctor; Dr Dan Turner, the head of the emergency department, isn’t a fly-in; Dr Suriya Hariprakash, the director of paediatrics, isn’t a fly-in; and the list goes on.
So, Ms Benham, why quote an unnamed person to spread such misinformation? The danger in that is that as an elected politician, people in your community are expected to believe you, not be duped.
Perhaps in the future, if person unknown tells you something, do your own research before quoting them verbatim?
It’s what the media do. And, no, that is not us protecting the hospital by calling this out, it is the media doing its job and finding the truth.
That, we think, is what our community deserves.
The Sunraysia Daily has published many, many stories on the MBPH over the years, including numerous that have spoken to its performance.
A recent article highlighted that the hospital had faced an admissions increase of more than 300 patients a month this financial year, an 18 per cent rise at a hospital already identified as undersized and under-resourced relative to the population it services.
The Sunraysia Daily has also written many stories and opinion pieces pushing for the release of the hospital master plan, something Ms Benham also called for in parliament last week. It is something this newspaper has been very strong on and we encourage Ms Benham to keep up that fight.
So, to suggest local media is protecting the MBPH is, again, fundamentally untrue, and unfairly attacks the integrity of journalists.
The Sunraysia Daily has been consistent in highlighting that Mildura needs a bigger and better hospital. It is something that we all should be working together towards.
But misinformation helps no one.
We make no apologies for ensuring the truth gets in the way of a politician’s story. That’s just us doing our job.
